Articles

Taiwanese model Olivia Ku has drowned during an underwater photographic modeling session near Hengchun Township, in Taiwan’s southern Pingtung County. News.com.au reports that she suffered an asthma attack while underwater. Our thoughts go out to her husband and daughter as well as to her family and friends. (Images: CEN/australscope)

Underwater photographer, Dr. Alex Tattersall provides a personal perspective about the fiercely contested issue of subject manipulation in macro underwater photography. In his article, he shows examples of five photographic and compositional techniques that can be used to enhance such images as an alternative to the movement or harassment of subjects.

This weekend marks the start of the Lembeh-Gulen Critter Shootout. This event will pit two teams of photographers against each other, one at Lembeh Resort in Indonesia, and the other at Gulen Dive Resort in Norway. The Gulen team is being led by Keri Wilk, and the the Lembeh team by Tobias Friedrich. Alex Mustard is co-ordinating the two teams and overseeing the judging process. Each team will be submitting images for a public vote, on the event’s Facebook page. Wetpixel will be on hand and reporting “live” from the event, so please stay tuned for in-depth coverage.

A post on Facebook by South African angler Mark Hicks has resulted in a 28-strong Chinese fishing fleet being interdicted by the authorities. Hicks had been tracking the fleet’s behavior using a smartphone app that tracks vessel movements. He noticed that when the fishing fleet approached the area around Port St. Johns on the east coast, they would switch off their AIS transponders, apparently to mask their presence.

Nauticam USA has released details of their integration of UW Technics’s TTL and electro-optical converter for Nikon SLR cameras . This offers TTL and manual exposure control of strobes from the camera’s hotshoe via fiber optic cables. The upgrade is user installable and is compatible with Inon and Sea&Sea strobes.

Mangrove has announced their housing for the JVC GY-HM200 and GY-HM170 camcorders. The housing offers LANC control of 37 camera functions, including manual white balance. It also has an in-built 3.5” High–Resolution TFT LCD monitor which has its own power source, so as to preserve the camera’s battery. The MVHJ-HM200 is compatible with Mangrove’s port system.

Digital Rev has published a list of their top ten underwater photography tips. The list was compiled by Hannah Scott who spoke to several professional underwater photographers and got their top tips. Contributing photographers included David Doubilet, Benjamin von Wong, and Matt Draper.

Keldan, via their US distributer, has announced a new video light, and updates to two existing models. The Video 8X CRI offers 8,000 Lumen output with a color rendering index of 96. The Video 8X Flux has ben upgraded to offer 12,000 Lumen output and the Video 4X to 7,000.